Originally Posted by
RobbyRobot 
Yeah, I'm on board with all that too. We are quite different, lol.
Originally Posted by GT
Over the recent years, I have occasionally tested my Beast by making scotch-on-the-rocks; to hear the golden liquor pour out of the fancy bottle, listen to the ice crackle, then feel the cold glass in my hand and lift it up to my nose and deeply smell it. That's the closest I can get to resurrecting my Beast, yet still, I'm unable to recall the pleasurable sensation. Could I handle it if I tried drinking again? It's a meaningless question because I took the choice away from myself many years ago. So, I know my alcohol/drug Beast is less than an old withered up appendix, and even in those extreme tests, I can just barely hear it or feel it any more.
Yeah, I agree with you. Its a meaningless question, and yet you still ask it of yourself? This asking, to me, creates AV because within the question is some possible doubt of the outcome. This possible doubt creates AV. Purposely creating AV has mixed results, eventually, is my experience. I'm not into doing that anymore.
The particular Technique of AVR I used with the scotch-on-the-rocks is called SHIFTING. The intention of SHIFTING is to, yes, draw out and create some AV. That very doubt you mention is AV. I couldn't even feel any doubt.
I knew MY absolute detachment from the drink, and then I intentionally tried to recognize ITs single-minded demand to get me to drink it. Well, it was hardly there at all. It did remind me of dank dark barrooms with pool tables. But no ambivalence. And since I can't remember the pleasurable sensation of being even slightly under the influence, let alone drunk, there was no "appetite" pressure.
For me it's the same with pot. I had a strange pot using dream not too many years ago, and when it got to the point in the dream where I smoked, the sensation of being high didn't happen the way it used to in my dreams decades ago. Instead I just felt huge fatigue and slightly dizzy, like my brain was trying to recreate the high sensation, but it simply couldn't. It had been too long ago.
What if you couldn't handle it? Even though you can effectively deal with the AV created, the doubt still must be resolved, the AV dimissed, and all the while your Beast got a little taste of meat there, imo. Feeding the Beast is what it is, I suppose. Mine is starved, and I prefer to not play selfish games with outcomes that I already know of the said outcome, before my needless manufacturing of new doubt.
I have in my sober time tested myself in various ways so as to shake out any deeper hidden AV. You know, looking for possible as yet undisclosed doubts and hidden agenda which might be important for me to be aware of so as to be on my toes so to speak in whatever situations I can imagine as practical future situations I may find myself experiencing. There is nothing left to much test against for me anymore. My 31 yrs of unbroken abstinence ongoing is more then half my life. It's all good now, lol. I've recovered already.
I do not though, directly test myself to see if I can recall or otherwise experience pleasure by way of holding a drink in my hands for the express purpose of trying to bring out my Beast. Having a drink in my hands wouldn't mean anything one way or the other. Purposely trying to prove something to myself about that drink in my hand would be just vanity at its worse for me.
I haven't forgotten about when my life was being threatend with alcohol. And I never will. And I won't ever change my mind. I'm all stocked up on been there and done that with alcoholic pleasures.
What you describe above reminds me of your dedication to the recovery group movement and what in AVRT is called the "institutionalized Addictive Voice". The recovery group movement, in making sobriety a group project, tends to leave in place one's doubt about their alone being capable of not drinking, while in AVRT that doubt is exposed and dismissed (like with the Shifting exercise I did). That may be where your sense that the Shifting I tried to do with the scotch-on-the-rocks was a sort of vanity on my part. I can see that. But I believe that shifting exercise proves the potency of AVRT in both solving the problem and allowing the PhD (Phormer Drunk) to put the addiction behind them and get on with their own way of life.
Well, you got me wrong. Like I'm saying, I can easily remember not only the pleasure I received but also the consequences of the pleasure morphing against me into an extreme experience of decidely displeasure. I absolutely remember where I have been relative to my drinking days, when contemplating how I felt during those drinking experiences. I quit drinking not because it felt good, lol. I quit drinking because I was dying from the inside out. This did not feel good, this dying thing while drinking, or while I pretended to be managing my drinking, or when I would swear off drinking, delude myself into forgetting I was feeling like death warmed over, and return to drinking, looking to see if I could feel good about drinking again. I have no future which includes drinking, so the pleasure for me is as good as the last time(s) I had a drink, and believe me, it sure as hell didn't feel good.
Well, you do what ever works for you. It won't make a bit of difference to me, now that I've re-positioned myself to understand where you are coming from, GT. I'm interested in what you post of course, I'm not interested in your comparative analysis of my AVRT. My practice of AVRT is also an expression of myself, and since you don't actually
seriously get who I am, where I've come from, and where I'm going, there is not much of value being offered to me to be honest. I'm not just anybody. And I'm certainly not your student. I'm me. Yeah, baby.
Feel free though to use me (or anyone else) as an example of what not to do with AVRT if you think, feel and conclude that while doing so, such behaviors from you are helpful to yourself, and others. No problemo. Have at it. While you're busy doing all that, I'll be busy doing something else.
I like to walk around in a persons shoes as much as I can imagine before I do whatever with them. I like to be in agreement with them that we have some level of human relationship, and I like to be of service towards that end. No matter how a person makes their way into recovery, and keeps themselves recovered, its not my business to correct them like I'm marking their term papers, lol. I know alot of stuff in my 55 yrs. Doesn't mean everybody and anybody wants to hear it, lol. I always think of persons listening to me on whatever level they may choose to participate, as an enjoyed privilege for me, that they have extended to me, no less.
See ya later, GT.
:ghug3
The Technique of Recognizing the Addictive Voice is brutal against the desire to drink/use again. When people use the laser focus of the RT to expose the AV, it can sometimes be misinterpreted by an onlooker as being condescending, vain, mean, any number of adjectives. But hopefully, with further understanding, those adjectives get dropped.
GT